An EU youth mobility scheme should have every Brexit voter's support, writes George Eustice

The concession on fisheries represents a one-sided gift to the EU of approximately £2.5bn of fishing opportunities over the next decade.

Having made the concession, the PM should at least have withheld signing it until the EU delivered its side of the bargain. Instead, fisheries were signed away in isolation.

Furthermore, the commitment to slavishly follow EU law on food and farming rules will undermine the UK’s ability to be a global leader in science and technology, and the removal of border checks on imports increases the risk of animal or plant diseases.

However, there is one element of the EU reset where the Prime Minister is absolutely right. There should be a basis for cross-party agreement, and the Government should have much more self-confidence.

That is on establishing a Youth Mobility Scheme (YMS), or Youth Experience Scheme (YES), as it is now described. The last Conservative Government strongly supported the idea of a YMS with the EU, but could never quite see a political route to land one, given domestic public opinion and concerns about the EU’s rapacious nature in such negotiations.

The ability to create a YMS is technically reserved for EU member states, but the EU issued a diktat to members not to negotiate with the UK individually. Therefore, a YES now forms part of the EU reset negotiations.

The UK Trade and Business Commission (UKTBC) has published a cogent negotiating mandate for the UK government, providing a sensible basis for an agreed scheme. Having given so much ground already in other areas, it is important the Government sets the right negotiating mandate and tenaciously defends it.

The UK already has YMSs with countries as diverse as Australia, Canada, Japan, Uruguay, India and Taiwan, and there are many advantages to them. Firstly, they facilitate cultural exchanges for young people. In an increasingly fractious age, we need to make a conscious effort to break down barriers and give young people opportunities to live and work abroad.

I was strongly in favour of leaving the EU and have no regrets, but our departure was a turbulent and divisive period. A scheme encouraging cultural crossover could rekindle friendships with our neighbours.

YMSs are temporary visas, typically for fixed periods of one to three years. Therefore, they do not lead to permanent migration, nor a population increase that heightens concern. They enable young people to work in the UK for a few years before returning home.

Under the reciprocal agreements, young British people would also have the chance to work abroad and experience something new. As the UKTBC makes clear, any EU scheme must follow precedent and be for a fixed term.

They are also right that there should be no conflation between a work-related YES and separate provisions for foreign students. Under no circumstances should the UK Government start paying financial contributions for EU students studying in the UK, as the Commission seeks.

The evidence from our existing YMSs is that they do not create permanent net migration. In fact, quite the opposite. They tend to create net emigration as young people born in the UK sometimes settle elsewhere. In that sense, a UK-EU YES might deliver the sort of net emigration Robert Jenrick says he would like to see.

The third advantage is that young people on these visas - who cannot bring dependents - are unlikely to worsen pressure on the NHS or other public services. YMS visas also cannot lead to grounds for wider family reunification visas.

As the UKTBC’s report makes clear, these conditions must be protected in the YES under discussion. It also sets out a pragmatic approach to mutual recognition on access to healthcare, recognising young people tend to need it less.

Finally, because there are no arbitrary rules on what job or salary young people can do or receive, a YES helps mitigate some of the damaging, unintended consequences of the current obsession with so-called “skills-based” immigration.

Current policy defines “skilled” through the prism of human social prejudice rather than the needs of our economy. We have enough lawyers, economists and insolvency practitioners, while those with human skills such as care workers - the very people our economy actually needs - are dismissed as lacking. A youth visa scheme would ease recruitment pressures on hospitality and food, and support economic growth.

The UKTBC recommends an annual cap of 44,000 visas on the new YES. Taken in the round, the scheme they propose is the embodiment of the “controlled immigration” we in Vote Leave argued for in 2016. It ought to command cross-party support.

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George Eustice was a former Conservative MP for Camborne and Redruth, in Cornwall, from 2010 to 2024, and he served as Secretary of State for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) from 2020 to 2022

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